OpenId = Not For Me
OpenID is great.
Or so I have been told.
I’m not stupid.
I think.
I’m into innovation and like trying out new stuff.
Having said that I don’t think OpenID is going anywhere in the state it is in today. I was confronted with a form that offered an OpenID sign-in. It wasn’t the first time I noticed one of these OpenID signs and I decided to try and get one myself. Unfortunately the form doesn’t offer one-click access to an OpenID sign-up form (first mistake) so I have to randomly find more information.
Lets try OpenID.org. Hmm, the text ‘You are using an alpha release of this site.‘ and ‘Currently managing 52 OpenId’s …‘ doesn’t inspire confidence. I decide to look further.
UPDATE: Steven Livingstone, founder of OpenID.org, told me that the site launched 48 hours ago and without any marketing. The fact that they had 52 OpenIDs within that small timeframe should actually inspire confidence!
Lets try OpenID.net. This looks much better. Hidden in the menubar at the right I find a link ‘I Want My OpenID‘ which is exactely what I want.
But the result is NOT what I want. I end up at a page titled ‘Mash Pit OpenID: PDX’. I have no idea what that means so end up reading the whole page. Apparently it is an event in Portland for people like me who want to have an OpenID too. I do want an OpenID but not if it requires me to travel to Portland.
After reading a few more pages mentioning intimidating words like ‘Identity Providers‘ and ‘i-brokers‘ I end up at Sxipper (from Dick Hardt). They offer a free Firefox Extension and provide an OpenId with it. Sounds cool and easy. Lets try that.
Unfortunately I can’t seem to install it. Sxipper manages your online identities and remembers the passwords for all your online services which is mighty convenient when you have more than one online identity.
It just seems that I have too many identities even for Sxipper.
The list of emailaddresses (I actually have more than displayed here. Click image to enlarge so you can copy the addresses and spam me) pushes the ‘Next’ button out of the window and there is no resize button there leaving me stranded halfway through sign-up.
How ironic.
So this is it. I have spent about an hour trying to get on the OpenID bandwagon which is a lot more time than most people would like to invest in a new service. The fact that I can’t get it to work or even understand the basics does not make me very optimistic about the future of OpenID.
But maybe I was just unlucky?
Or less intelligent than I thought?
If you know an OpenID website that will explain the whole thing to me in one paragraph (even better: in 3 images) and then gets me an OpenID in les than 3 clicks and 1 minute I will check it out and report back here.
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20 Responses to “OpenId = Not For Me”
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You can try https://www.myopenid.com/ or the Dutch equivalent http://www.mijnopenid.nl. I agree that there is an abundance of OpenID providers while it is not clearly stated what it is and why you can get it at all this different places.
let’s see if somehow i can able to help…
a part of my site is OpenID only comment/reply and that’s the url i used here.
though i decided to run my own OpenID server but still i have one from verisign.
a few days ago i entertained the idea of having an OpenID only forum.
You’re getting old! ;)
I agree that things could be clearer, but don’t write it of just yet. I think that if you do, you’ll be missing out on some great opportunities. This is great technology, it’s just a little rough on the edges.
Some easy spoiler page for the end users, which ranks high in Google, could help. I think OpenID.net should be redesigned. Next to that, you should always link to a provider when displaying an OpenID form, like this: http://www.ekudos.nl/kudoka/registreren
I recommend myopenid.com by the way. Really user friendly, and always the first to implement new stuff.
February 20 2007:
Kevin Rose, speaking here at the Future of Web Apps conference in London, just announced that Digg will adopt the OpenID decentralized digital identity platform. Don’t expect this right away though - adoption will begin “later this year†according to Rose.
It’s definitely time to declare OpenID a winner and the hope for a single-sign on world a reality. This Digg news comes just after Microsoft and AOL announced their support as well. Yahoo, LiveJournal, and Wikipedia are among the other services that have previously announced adoption.
http://www.techcrunch.com/2007.....ts-openid/
Thanks for the feedback guys! I’m trying MyOpenId.com now.
Happy to see that the whole Wakoopa.com team is working during the weekend. Or reading blogs… ;-)
Hi,
It looks like others have already said this, but I suggest MyOpenId.com. As far as I know they’re the only ones to offer any anti-phishing protection (someone correct me if I’m wrong).
You also mentioned that you like the idea of a password manager (re: sxipper), for that, you can check out PassPack (disclosure: I’m a founding partner).
PassPack uses Ajax to encrypt and decrypt your passwords in your browser. Then the encrypted bundle gets sent to the server for storage. The key to unlock that bundle never leaves your browser, so we have no way of “reading” what’s inside your account. It’s completely private. Here’s how that works:
http://passpack.wordpress.com/.....king-keys/
If you’re interested, there’s a getting started guide here:
http://passpack.wordpress.com/.....g-started/
Also - LOTS of new features and evolution coming soon. Take a tour around the blog for more info, or feel free to write me directly.
Cheers,
Tara
To get you started really really quickly: Your Wordpress.com blog URL is already an OpenID and Wordpress hosts their own OpenID provider so you can use that to login without a hitch.
If you want to self-host your OpenID later on, that should also be possible. It is intended that sites be aware that one user may have multiple different OpenIDs.
Hey Boris. OpenId.org is only 2 days old (well, 1.5, my timezone). I love to inspire confidence, but as i don’t want to give the impression the site is flawless.
We’re at 63 now :)
I actually agree that one issues is the entaglement of open id with various vocabulary specific concepts. I kinda want to present something plain and simple.
Thanks for checking it out anyway. Open ID is definitely something that is needed (i say as i add my name, email, url and secret code on your blog), but the it needs to be adopted as much as possible by sites and users.
All the best.
- steven
or this one, 3 in one:
http://signup.mylid.net/signup/
To bad that signups that have OpenID enabled don’t have a link to an service that offers an OpenID account. They assume you already have and use OpenID (maybe thats a good assumption to reduce complexity but it don’t help OpenID adoption).
I am sorry that your first encounter with OpenID has caused more trouble than it should have; actually it shouldn’t cause trouble at all.
If you want to know more about OpenID I recommend watching Simon Willison’s educational screencast:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vq0R1Y1A2rE
you can use your ziki as a provider :-)
the url is http://my.ziki.com/yourlogin
Always use a OpenID provider in your own language Boris! ;-) htttp://www.mijnopenid.nl, an OpenID with 1-click..
The problem with OpenID is probably that getting a OpenID is nice but the questions come with using it and the providers don not cover that part quite well.
I remember there’s nothing wrong with your memory… ;-) So, Will you ever forget that Lousy User Experience?
I use 1Passwrd. (http://1passwd.com/) Great application to manage your (multiple) id’s
It switches everything between safari, camino, firefox etc.
Good news: the newer builds of Sxipper have resizable setup windows. The list of email addresses is retrieved from your vCard or OS X Address Book. And Sxipper will, in the near future, let you to enter a different email address, if the one you want to use is not shown. -Matt, Sxipper product manager, http://www.sxipper.com
@Matt: thanks for helping me with this! Somehow the Sxipper set-up screen keeps popping up if Firefox crashes on me (several times a day). Any idea how to fix it?
Note, if you use AIM (AOL Instant messanger) then you have the option of:
http://openid.aol.com/YOURAIMID
Might want to checkout https://pip.verisignlabs.com/ and see what you think.
@Boris - my apologies, not exactly a swift response by any stretch — I got completely distracted with getting up to speed in my new job here — but here I am again! Obviously your Sxipper installation was getting damaged the crashes, but running through setup should fix it (note the “I already have an account” option on the first page of setup. The new release, 0.9.30, has some major form-fill changes and more. For OpenID we now support PAPE with a phishing-resistant policy - here’s the demo: https://verify.sxip.com/papedemo/. -Matt, Sxipper product manager